The Seahawks will continue their preseason on Saturday night against the Broncos without wide receiver Percy Harvin and it will be a little while before they know whether or not Harvin will stand a strong chance of returning to the team at any point in the regular season.
Harvin had hip surgery at the start of August and coach Pete Carroll said at the time that the team was “hopeful” that their biggest offseason acquisition would heal in time to help the offense. Carroll said Friday that he remains hopeful while acknowledging that it is soon too early to tell if a comeback is even in the cards.
“We just know that the surgeon that did the work was thrilled with the way he came back the days right after the surgery, and his ability to get range of motion and things were way ahead of schedule, so that’s a great sign,” Carroll said, via John Boyle of the Everett Herald. “We’re hopeful, whatever that means. We won’t know, it’s going to take a good month before we can figure if he’s even going to have a chance to come roaring back out of it, but it looks like all of the signs are very good. So we’ll see what that means, but we’re not putting any weeks on it. We don’t know.”
At the time of Harvin’s surgery, the Seahawks were reportedly planning to place Harvin on the PUP list at the start of the regular season. Doing that would allow for an earlier return than placing him on injured reserve with the designation to return, although, as Carroll said, at this point we don’t know if a Harvin return is anything more than a pipe dream.